What We're Reading: The Foundation's Focus on Research to Eliminate Pediatric AIDS
Posted by
Robert Yule
Boston, MA
March 1, 2011
More than two decades ago, Elizabeth Glaser created the Pediatric AIDS Foundation with two friends to give hope to children and families living with HIV. Before that time, there had been virtually no research into how to prevent and treat HIV infections in children. Today, the Foundation continues Elizabeth’s legacy by funding and conducting groundbreaking research on pediatric AIDS.
2011 ILA winner Dr. Landon Myer
Yesterday at the
18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston, the Foundation announced the recipient of its prestigious International Leadership Award. The three- year grant will support the research of Dr. Landon Myer of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Dr. Myer will use his award – generously funded by the
Stavros Niarchos Foundation – to discover new strategies to start pregnant, HIV-positive women on antiretroviral therapy. This will both protect the health of the mother and dramatically increase the likelihood that her baby will be born HIV-free.
Click here to read the press release.
Dr. Laura Guay, the Foundation’s Vice President of Research, authored a related article in the just-released Winter 2011 issue of Global Health Magazine. She writes about the need for continued studies into pediatric HIV/AIDS to continue the positive momentum of the past decade. Dr. Guay knows well the power of new research findings – her work on a study in Uganda in 1999 laid the groundwork for the success we’re seeing today in preventing new HIV infections in children in the developing world.
Click here to read the article.
An op-ed co-authored by Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, the Foundation’s Executive Vice President of Medical and Scientific Affairs, and Dr. Richard Marlink, a senior adviser at the Foundation and a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, was also published today in the Huffington Post. Drs. Hellmann and Marlink review the research progress over the past twenty years that has brought us to the point of being able to eliminate pediatric HIV/AIDS worldwide. They argue for the continued need for public and private resources to fund new studies, particularly with threatened budget cuts for the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Click here to read the article.
To learn more about the Foundation’s strategic focus on research to create a generation free of HIV,
click here.
Robert Yule is the Foundation’s Senior Media Relations Manager, reporting from CROI in Boston.
Note: For reporters covering new research findings released at the CROI conference, please contact the media team to arrange an interview with our new ILA recipient or a member of our Research Department.